1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to flash drive technology and more particularly, to a flash drive and protective cover mounting structure, which uses a double layer design of protective cover for protecting the electrical connector, eliminating any further surface treatment and facilitating quick production.
2. Description of the Related Art
A flash drive is a data storage device using flash memory for storing and transmitting data. Regular flash drives commonly use a Universal Serial Bus (USB) as a standard transmitting interface. Nowadays, flash drives have been widely used in smart phones, cameras, tablet computers, and many other mobile electronic products. With fast development of data storage technology, small-sized high-capacity flash drives (flash drives) have been continuously created and have appeared on the market.
A conventional flash drive generally comprises a casing, a printed circuit board mounted in the casing, a flash memory installed in the printed circuit board, an Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface integrated with the printed circuit board and extended out of the casing, and a protective cover detachably capped on the casing to shield the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface. Before each use, the user needs to open the protective cover from the casing so that the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface can be inserted into a mating Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface of an external electronic apparatus. After the use and removal of the flash drive from the external electronic apparatus, the user may forget to take back the protective cover.
Taiwan Utility Model Patent M497329 disclosed a flash drive, entitled “Flash drive with pivoted protective cover” that allows the protective cover to be biased between an open position to expose the USB connector and a closed position to shield the USB connector. According to this design, the flash drive comprises a casing 10 having a standard USB connector 11 extended out of one end thereof, and a substantially U-shaped protective cover 12 having a pivot connection portion 13 located at an eccentric location and pivotally coupled to a mating pivot connection portion (not shown) at the casing 10. For the sake of beauty, an ornament is provided to the pivot connection portion 13 from sight. Thus, the protective cover 12 can be biased relative to the casing 10 between an open position to expose the USB connector 11 and a closed position to shield the USB connector 11. Because the protective cover 12 is pivotally connected to the casing 10, it can shield the electrical connector 11 and will not be lost. According to this design, it is necessary to make a pivot connection portion 13 at the protective cover 12 and a mating pivot connection portion at the casing 10 for the connection of the pivot connection portion 13 of the protective cover 12. After formation of the pivot connection portion 13 at the protective cover 12 and the mating pivot connection portion at the casing 10, a further surface treatment such as polishing must be employed to smoothen the surface of the protective cover 12 and the surface of the casing 10, consuming much time and labor and relatively increasing the product cost. Further, even an ornament is installed to keep the pivot connection portion 13 from sight, the outer appearance of the protective cover 12 cannot be maintained planar, affecting the overall sense of beauty of the product.